One small contradiction. in Fallout New vegas DLC Lonesome Road, the narrator literally says "If war never changes, men/women do, through the roads they walk."
Imagine making a crack at dune 2 and pretending to have any kind of standard when it comes to engaging with media when you find the Vault-Tec clown room scene as a poignant and "terrifying" piece of satire
people trying to find an anti-capitalist message/themes in a FUCKING AMAZON SHOW will never not be funny to me. This whole Vault-Tec scene doesn't just contradict the Fallout games' lore, where V-T became de-facto state company centered around experimenting on the U.S.A's own citizens, it doesn't make much sense in-show universe too. If V-T bosses want more profit why destroy the literal society all around them, making sure that the very notion of "profit" becomes irrelevant?
@@Dreaming05Man Because profit and wealth are just proxies for control of resources, and the real endgame of capitalism is monopolisation of resources, rather than anything to do with quarterly returns. The latter just makes sure that the firm is on track for it's goals, to eventually achieve the former.
80% of all wars fought were over recourses, mostly water. Most war simply wouldn’t be fought if there was enough water for everyone, because not enough people would be desperate enough to fight for their country.
atleast we got a show out of it instead of waiting a couple years for another shit-esda game thats secretly skyrim in disguise. Atleast fallouts mainstream some what
@@rebeccasutton2401 I don't think they're similar in some way. I know that Amazon is the biggest conglomerate or the richest megacorporation in the world, but AFAIK, they don't have the equivalent to _selling the end of the world for the sake of making one of their products/projects profitable._
And lonesome road stands as an antithesis to the themes of new Vegas as a whole. New Vegas is quite explicitly about people literally unwilling to let go of the power structures of the old war. Lonesome Road lets a smart and diligent courier show someone who walked in his shoes that there is a better way, that people can progress and change through the roads they walk.
This is horrible. Clearly made by a Tourist. Chris Avellone said Fallout wasn't about "durr durr capitalism bad." Tim Cain said the People's Republic of China dropped the bombs, and it's proven by the Yangtze Submarine too. And you completely missed one of the core themes of Lonesome Road. "War never changes, but men do through the roads they cross." It was humanity's ever lasting lust for violence and power which led to its downfall, not Capitalism. This video just shows that the Fallout franchise has been damaged by the show.
Exactly. Its less Capitalism and more Consumerism. The war wasn't over Capitalism it was about humanity's greed and lust for violence and I don't mean money greed I mean greed for power. The wars started because of over consumption from everyone worldwide.
@@commanderAnakin no it didn’t. Any newcomers to the series would likely do research on the prior games and form their own opinion. Even if they didn’t, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the current vibe fallout has, it’s just different than it was originally. If anything the fallout show gives them a better idea of the past games given how dark it gets(like fallout 1 and 2) and how comedic and lighthearted as well(like new vegas, 4, 76). The majority of the themes are included in the show, as are a lot of the gameplay mechanics. Your bad example is entirely subjective
Okay, I'll just get to the point, the point of Fallout (originally, before a lot of the retcons) is that human arrogance wiped out humanity, not necessarily any particular ideology, society, or system of government. No, it was people being so assured that they are "right" that they never take the time to examine if they are actually correct, or that in their desperate bid to prove themselves "right" that they aren't going to cause the end of the world (literally).
Gotta dissgree with tha last part, og fallout lore states that vaultec and the enclave worked together in order to start experiments to create a "perfect" society in order to prepare humanity to board a generation ship to colonize another planet and thus vaultec was also tasked to force as many citizens as they could to go to vaults therefore they nuked everything to start the experiments
"Hmm... We have this great product [the Vaults] but there doesn't seem to be a real *demand* for it." "I know! What if we make that demand?" [dropping the bombs] I don't know man, but that's, like, the common thread of Capitalism: manipulating the supply/demand for profit. And it's not just the Vaults themselves they're trying to sell, but the apocalypse itself aswell.
"Consumerism" was a wrong term to use in this case. The point was that the insatiable profiteering of Vault Tec led to the *creation* of the apocalypse, in other words: Capitalism sold the world its ending - or its new start, whichever you take it.
@@Gelatinocyte2 They didn't sell the world anything, they just decided in a board meeting one day that nuking everything would be beneficial to their bottom line. There's nothing deep going on here, it's just the writers mugging the camera and saying "aren't capitalists so stupid?"
@@Gelatinocyte2 nothing says "insatiable profiteering" as destroying the very fabric of society in a nuclear holocaust, leaving only irradiated wasteland and isolated self-sufficient vaults behind. You know, the perfect environment in which both the seller and the consumer can thrive! People really need to get through their heads that the Amazon show just do not have the most brilliant writers and the is no deeper meaning behind this.
Fallout used to be a story about how man's increasing capacity for destruction would eventually catch up with his millenia-spanning desire to make war, and that one day there will have to be a war that will reset centuries of progress and leave us to figure out new ways to live and grow or die trying. It was a perfect setting for nuanced ethical and political discussions, with room to indulge in goofy 50's retro-futurism contrasted with 90's ultra-violence Now it's all about how clown people thought nuking everything would make them money because capitalism rewards stupidity I guess, and everything gets to be a perpetual wasteland because that's what Fallout "is" now
The series has definitely gotten a lot more heavy handed and, uh, bad at lore writing just in general But I’d argue that Fallout has always had Anti-Capitalist themes (rigged) from the start
@@thatcooldude9147 Fallout 1 isn't at all concerned with critiquing capitalism. The intro narration ties directly into The Master's motivations to remove the cultural and genetic differences between humans that leads to war. The theme is about the horror of humanity's seemingly innate desire for conflict, and the consequences of said desire being met with rapid technological progress, with The Master offering his own solution that you have to argue against. If that's not enough, Chris Avellone asked Tim Cain about Fallout's anti-capitalist themes and Cain said that wasn't the point of the game. The best you can try and hope for is to apply the critical theory "everything is everything" nonsense and claim that because capitalism is so ubiquitous, the series can't not comment on capitalism. This is boring trite for cowards.
@@sieda666 bro we can copy and paste your sentence and use it against the youtuber who made this video, how about you actually make an counter instead of dropping tears all over your keyboard dawg
It's important to note that Capitalism and Consumerism are not the same thing. You can still have Consumerism under non-Capitalist conditions, it's only a matter of consumption (hence the name).
Just to add to this, but there's nothing stopping anyone living in a capitalist society from starting some kind of communist based community of their own within it. Obviously the need to trade with the outside world still exists, but you can live by the tenants of communism under capitalism whereas you cannot under communism. This is a result of how each system has been enforced in the past.
@@Loreweavver Consumerism is just a culture of loyal patronage to a brand or service; Consumerism is also the excessive expenditure of resources just for the sake of a product. In other words: having something just for the sake of having it, even though it's largely unneeded or unnecessary. This was already a thing before Capitalism as we know it today was even a thing.
@@Gelatinocyte2 fair 'nuff. The American Indians did go nuts over those mass produced glass beads that didn't have the same value as the ones they found naturally. Would capitalism then be a product of consumerism? That is to say if people are prone to consumerism it leads to a system where others profit by taking advantage of the urge to consume?
@@Loreweavver Probably, I guess. But the main driving force towards Capitalism is the centralization of Industry - what they call back then as the "means of production"; I'm just saying it has more to do with the distribution or control of property/wealth, and less so to the fact that merchants and salespersons exist.
"That time sucked. You know... the time where everyone lived in safety in a high trust society with an incredibly high standard of living? Yeah. Totally awful."
Right. It's like all of the people in the United States started getting more anxious and afraid after science taught us that more anxiety and fear make people easier to control.
Obviously some people don't pay attention to the wealth of pre-war stories that can be found throughout the Wasteland in these games. Yeah, pre-war America was shitty, post-war America was even shittier.
You seem intelligent and have interesting thoughts, but seem to struggle to get them across. The montages are a bit too long, not just on the "long montage" section (which works well as an intro), but on the start of the "society" section. And some of the jokes comes across more as a lack of confidence in the video, the whole sex joke at 5:40 was obnoxious. Otherwise this was sorta exactly what I've been looking for, short, intelligent video essays that aren't just a recap or a surface level observation.
well hes a small content creator and needs to expand his audience. if anything I consider his videos a piece of art and pretty good and thought he had a lot of subs judging the effort he puts in them.
He seems intelligent to you. Truth is, he's having a hard time getting his thoughts across because he doesn't really have a lot of complex ones. I've spoken to countless "capitalism critics" in my life and i can tell you that none of them think more than surface level about their ideology. As they say, to be communist is to be naive.
Chris Avellone, developer on Fallout 2 and lead dev of New Vegas on if Fallout is anti capitalist. Nope. How do I know? Because I went to the source and asked. I thought there was a chance I was wrong, so rather than commit to an assumption, I decided to do some basic, easy research. Like asking a question vs. making a statement. It helps. While there might be stories told by individuals and quests in Fallout that are anti-capitalism, to say its roots are anti-capitalist and Fallout was originally envisioned as anti-capitalist or an anti-capitalist statement is 100% wrong."
I want to show this video to someone that only played Fallout 1 & 2 back in the day this video just to show him what the series has degenerated into Imagine playing Fallout 1, with all the intrigue and potential that game had, and later learning that the series would one day devolve into "capitalism bad" and "clown people nuked the world" thanks to hack TV writers
Thats not even what the show is supposed to depict. There is no money in the end of the world and Vault Tec didn't drop the nukes. Vault Tec was after power and its meant to show humanity's lust for power and doing anything to attain it. You don't need money to have power you just need the influence.
The fact, that vault droped the bombs is actualy estabilished in the show, it was not in the vision of the developers (someone said that amazon did it, because they are not much better than Fallout companies, so they needed them to look worse than themselves). It is about human nature as a whole, not just "muh, capitalism bad" or "governemt bad".
The thing is they didn't actually say Vault Tec dropped them they only suggested they would if they had to. In the games we actually have evidence that China launched first.
I think this is anti-mega corp. because i can back you on hating Megacorps but if you hate Capitalism that means you hate RU-vidr's who sell merchandise to make sure they can pay their bills, you hate the small business and it would be pretty weak to make an anti capitalist game by using capitalism.
Yeah I don’t get where the anti-capitalism thing came from. The show is 100% about the evil huge corporations can commit for profit or knowledge. Capitalism is just the system Vault-Tec used.
And that's the thing. Mega corps are a product of the government. That's why people who really LIKE the government have to find ways to beleive that it's actually still somehow something else's fault.
The whole show is propped up not by an actual critique or satire of capitalism but by that millennial style “le capitalism is le bad, student loans right guys hahahahaha” writing
0:19 Before making this video, did you develop your frontal lobe at all? I'm getting "smooth and withered" vibes from this absolutely hollow-headed take.
Tell me you never played new vegas without telling me you never played new vegas... You know Kay Kaiser but not Howdy Partner or CCC doesn't work for free, and obviously never travelled at night or over a graveyard and heard the ghosts talking to you. Oh, and uhhhh, calling it Las Vegas... Goodness nowadays fallout is about evil capitalism and not Human Nature, the tourists have dumbed down our fandom and turned a small part of the overall themes into the central point of it...
Fallout is about how humanity can't escape its violent cycle, not about consumerism or capitalism. In all of the intros of the fallout games(especially 1 and 3) it states repeatedly that war will never change since men will not change, no matter the trivial motives behind the conflict. If they wanted a critique of capitalism, they should have showed a struggling NCR trying to recover after their withdraw from the Mojave, and suffering the consequences of water and food shortages, amid power struggles between the five states and territories of the NCR. The three Reno families, Brahmin Barons, strongmen in the leadership in the military, disillusionment on the California dream. Then you can have BoS remnants take their licks with other domestic or foreign factions like the Shi, Legion, CCC, Gun Runners, Hub guilds and gangs, NCR political parties, Rangers etc. But no we get a shallow retcon of the West Coast cause the show writers are hacks supervised by Tod Howard, and we all know his opinion on NV.
Well, I agree with the sentiment. I always felt that Fallout goes a lot deeper than the base criticisms of Capitalism and Consumerism. I always saw it as a cautionary tale of unchecked power and mankind's dogmatic lust for control and survival.
Fallout show is total shit. Their thinly vieled attempt to shoehorn THE MESSAGE in between Americana nostalgia and everything fallout is abhorrently disgusting.
The show was fine. If that was your take away you should just stop watching media all together because you're just looking for shit to hate on...then again if that's your thing, each their own.
@@stakeaphobicz498 no it wasn't. From a objective standpoint point it was fuckin shit. If you like that is fine I don't have a problem with that just don't lie about it.
@@sarkaztik3228 No, I think there is nothing wrong with the concept of capitalism. It is the human connection to it that can have a negative effect on it. If you lived in a society where capitalism was run fair and square you'd likely agree. Then again you obviously don't know much about human nature to know the difference. Born from human greed ... you either aren't American OR you didn't learn much about how difference economies work. Even the barter system can be affected by "human greed" if a person knows what they possess is more important to the other person than what they need. My guess is you likely think guns kill people too even though it requires a finger to pull the trigger.
@@thisranks13 Capitalism seeks to remove that finger and make the gun work independant so it won't think. Capitalism seeks to put all power in the hands of whoever has the capital. They need consumers for now. Look at social media and other informations systems and you find out the capitalists are the consumer and YOU are the product.
@@thisranks13every economic system is affected by greed, but the previous systems at least didn't twisted and dehumanized society to the point were the market itself has been warped. The only way we can change it, is for us to change... Via genetic manipulation. Changing human nature to the point were our faulty system is not even needed. But of course, Gen research and application is heavily regulated, and it only takes one step into the wrong direction, to turn such project into a eugenics program, and the horrible extermination that ensues... It seems that we can't outrun our own nature.
interesting and well researched video! The faces may change but the actions and motivations never do, I'm glad a video game series is starting conversation about capitalist critique amongst gamers. Thanks for the vid!
Lol. "starting" fallout has been around for 20+ years. Also, i don't think most people who work hard to earn money to spend that money on video games and all the things you need to play video games are very interested in hearing how the things they like are actually bad.
i really hate games that just end. I love your points here though and this game series has pioneered the atompunk genre and fits very nicely with the others and it's a good retro blend of em all
